


and i never wanted to disappoint

by WattStalf



Series: Medical Malpractice OTP [30]
Category: Durarara!!
Genre: A little bit of everything, Angst, F/M, Fluff, basically just my shingen feels circlejerk, like honestly im just being indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 17:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8809738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WattStalf/pseuds/WattStalf
Summary: It's her, isn't it?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Whatever man  
> I love Shingen too much  
> I fucking cried about him yesterday WHILE AT WORK because I have a lot of feelings  
> And I don't even care anymore fuck  
> 

_Shinra was too young to understand what was going on, but she said it to him anyway. He listened as his wife told their young son that she was leaving, and explained her reasoning in a way that even a child could understand._

“ _I don't love him anymore,” she said._

_Shingen expected the boy to ask, “But don't you still love me?” but he didn't. Instead, he responded as if he understood perfectly. Shingen envied his son very much in that moment._

~X~

Nowadays, he doesn't think much about her, about the mother of his child and his first wife, his first love. It's been so long since she left him, and so much has changed since then. He and Shinra made it on their own- well, not _completely_ on their own- and now he's remarried. Now, he has Emilia, whom he loves more than he can completely express, and he doesn't have any need to remember the past.

But sometimes, he still does. Lately, the memories have been surfacing more and more, because he's experiencing something similar to an experience from his first marriage, and one of the happiest ones, at that. Emilia is pregnant, and it causes him to remember the months before Shinra was born, and all the excitement then.

He thinks she still loved him then, but even now, he can't be sure. Now, he knows it doesn't matter, but he catches himself wondering all the same. At what point did things change. She never explained anything to him, and always said there was nothing to explain, that she didn't have to try to justify her feelings to him. Of course, he just let her go at that point; it wasn't as if he could make her stay, and he'd let her down too many times, he supposed.

Things were rough after that, and he didn't _want_ to be such a disappointment, but the worse things got, the worse _he_ got. Even now, as he looks back, he knows he did just about everything he could wrong, while adjusting to being a single father, and yet, Shinra never said a thing. And he was so caught up in his own problems that he figured, if nothing was said, then he did nothing wrong.

It's no use thinking about it now, he knows, now that Shinra is grown and now that he's happy, now that he's _finally_ happy again, but he catches himself getting lost in those memories all the same. And so, he loses himself in the past more often than he should and, naturally, Emilia picks up on it, though he's enough of an idiot about things that he doesn't know that she knows, not at first.

He doesn't figure it out until he finds her crying one day.

~X~

_He didn't know what to do with himself for a while there. Of course, there had been so much tension that it should have felt like a relief to finally have her gone, but the sudden emptiness was so overpowering that he would gladly take arguments and passive aggressive silence and crackling tension back, with open arms. She was gone now, really gone, and the emptiness was too much._

_Even with Shinra, and that was when he began to make his mistakes. He had been distant, sometimes, and work had kept him away from home, but now, he had to bury himself in work, because anything was better than being there, where she used to live, and sometimes Shinra was left alone and sometimes, he would remember that he had to be there for his son, which meant that he would be dragged along. Usually, he was dragged along for things he was much too young for, but it wasn't so different from Shingen's own upbringing, so he never saw the problem with it._

_In the end, he was just happy to be able to distract himself from the fact that he had fucked up so badly that he had lost the love of someone he thought he would always be able to count on._

~X~

“Emilia, what's going on?” he asks, stepping into their bedroom. She sits up quickly, not facing him as she rubs at her eyes, likely trying to get rid of the evidence of her tears. When he found her, she was laying on her side, her shoulders shaking and a pillow muffling her quiet sobs.

“Nothing!” she quickly replies, but even the way her voice cracks is a dead give away.

“Pumpkin...” he says softly, walking over to their bed and sitting down beside her. “I know something's wrong. Please, tell me what it is.”

“I said nothing...” she mumbles, staring at her lap rather than looking at him.

“But I can tell. Come on, won't you tell me what's wrong?”

“Why don't _you_ tell me what's wrong?!” she snaps, turning to him for a moment, fresh tears in her eyes. But then she jolts and looks back down, mumbling, “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have...”

“Emilia? What do you mean by that?”

“I don't...” She sniffs, pulling into herself. “It's just...do you....are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you?” he asks, surprised.

“Because...because...you've been acting weird, okay?” Emilia chokes back a sob, looking back up at him. “I know you have been, it's just...I can tell you're upset about something, and I wanna know what I did wrong! If it's my fault, just tell me, and stop pretending.”

Guilt crashes over him then, as it finally dawns on him that it's entirely his fault that Emilia's in this state.

~X~

_It was harder to be with his son at first, as wrong as he knew that line of thinking was. He couldn't look at Shinra without seeing it; the boy resembled him more than his mother, but her features were there, and they became more and more apparent to him, the more he settled into his grief. At first, he couldn't look at him without feeling a sting, without wondering if even this part of their marriage was nothing to her._

_After all, she left Shinra behind too, so perhaps...perhaps even their son, a product of their love, was nothing. An act. Just going through the motions, pretending to love him before she revealed she didn't and left. That was, at first, all he could see Shinra as, but then, he knew. He knew that Shinra, though he never outwardly showed signs of grief himself, had been left behind just the same, and that it wasn't, and would never be, his fault that things had turned out this way._

_Rather than wasting his love on the wife who had abandoned them, Shingen decided to put all of his love into their child-_ his  _child, but it never really sunk in that he didn't do the best job of that._

~X~

He doesn't know what he's supposed to tell her about his behavior lately, because he knows that she won't take it well to hear that he's thinking about his ex-wife. But he can't bring himself to lie to her either, so he remains quiet for a moment before finally saying, “You know I could never be upset with you, pumpkin. It's not that. It's...my own fault, all of it.”

“Why are you so sad all the time?” she asks softly.

“Bad memories,” he replies, unable to say anything else.

“It's her, isn't it?” He should have known that she would be able to tell all too quickly.

“Yes.”

“I know it still makes you sad. I wish it didn't.” She lays her head on his shoulder and sighs. “I wish it didn't, but I know you can't help it. You don't still...I know you don't still...”

“I don't still have feelings for her,” he finishes. “You're right about that. I was hurt too much, and I don't think I could ever even forgive her. But sometimes, I just...remember how much it hurt, and even though I don't have those feelings anymore...”

“I understand,” she nearly whispers. “I love you so much.”

“And I love you,” he replies. “If it weren't for you...I almost feel bad saying this, considering my son, but if it weren't for you, I don't know if I ever would have been able to be truly happy again. But, with you, I'm happier than I've ever been.”

Emilia starts to sniffle again, and he asks, “What's wrong now? Did I upset you? Did I say something wrong?”

“No, it's just...I'm so happy too!” She shifts and turns his head, and he can tell just by looking at her what she wants him to do. And so, he removes his mask so that she can kiss him, and he holds her like that for a while. More than anything, he regrets letting his bad memories catch up to him and cause _her_ problems, as a result.

He never wants her to doubt that she's the most important woman in his life, and that nobody, not even his first love, holds a candle to her.

~X~

_Slowly but surely, he moved on from the woman who broke his heart, but he never thought that he would ever be able to love again. Shingen believed that he would be better off on his own, and that he didn't need anyone else in his life again. It wouldn't be worth the risk of getting heart again, he didn't think._

_Of course, back then, he had no idea._

~X~

Unbeknownst to him, Emilia thinks to herself about the way his previous marriage ended, and she rests a hand on her stomach and promises herself that she will be an infinitely better mother and wife, and that she will never let him down.

He rests his hand on top of hers, promising himself that  _he_ won't let  _her_ down; her, or their unborn child.

 


End file.
